


another year older

by ozmissage



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Multi, Sexual Content, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-29
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 16:09:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozmissage/pseuds/ozmissage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Birthdays come but once a year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	another year older

Tyler is thirty-five.

When he stares at himself in the mirror, he can see lines creasing his forehead as he smiles. He’s smiling a lot today. It’s his birthday. And Caroline is in his bedroom.

“You’re getting old,” she teases from her place on his bed. She’s sprawled across the black sheets, wrinkling her expensive white dress and _not giving a damn_ (her words).

Tyler hovers above her dropping kisses against her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips.

“You’re not,” he replies.

She wraps a hand around the back of his neck, draws him down for a proper kiss, her own special way of changing the subject.

*

Caroline is nineteen.

Only she’s not. She never will be. She’s seventeen. Seventeen and five months to be exact. Eternally.

“Stop moping,” Stefan says, lighting the candles on her misshapen birthday cake.

“Did you sit on this?” she asks petulantly.

“Are you mocking my baking skills? Just so you know, I spent two years working in the kitchen at La Tour d'Argent in the ‘60s.”

Caroline runs a finger around the rim of the cake plate scooping up the excess frosting before popping it into her mouth. Butterscotch. It’s not bad. Still, it’s her birthday. The first one she’s spent on her own since Elena and Bonnie ran off to college and she left Mystic Falls to be eternally whatever somewhere else.

“Liar,” she mutters and Stefan catches her hand, lapping the last smudge of sweetness from her finger with his tongue.

“Okay, so maybe I was the dishwasher, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything.”

She rolls her eyes as she cuts the first slice of cake.

*

Stefan has stopped counting.

All of the people who might have reminded him of the day are far, far, away from here. At least that’s what he thinks as he sits in a diner just outside of Newark, sipping coffee as the long and short hand of the clock meet at twelve. His birthday has officially come and gone without recognition.

He finishes off his cup and drives back to the rat hole he’s calling home this week with every intention of falling into bed and sleeping until noon.

They’re waiting on the stoop for him, their shoulders pressed together to stave off the cool night air.

“Hey there, birthday boy,” Caroline says slyly before flinging herself into his arms. Stefan catches her, hides his grin in her curls.

Tyler approaches, still hesitant even after all they’ve done. He holds out a hand to Stefan and Stefan takes it and pulls him into a hug.

“Hi,” Tyler murmurs, his lips brushing against Stefan’s neck.

“Hi, yourself,” Stefan whispers back.

*

Tyler is twenty-one and his birthday, this most momentous of birthdays, just had to fall on a fucking full moon.

He prowls around the yard, keenly aware that Stefan and Caroline are keeping a watchful eye on him from the porch. They know he’s pissed. The feeling is amplified by the coming change. He’s psyching himself up. Four years and every transformation still hurts like hell.

He has three hours to kill before they lock him in the basement for the night while they hunt or watch crappy television or fuck. He tries not to be bitter about their last and most probable option of activities for the night.

But it’s his twenty-first, damn it. He can’t get shitfaced. He can’t get laid. Why should they?

“I don’t want you two to screw around tonight,” he calls to them.

They exchange a glance and Tyler’s pretty sure a smirk. Stefan is beside him before Tyler can draw another breath.

He kisses Tyler lustily, viciously almost. It’s a kiss Stefan reserves for full moons.

“What if we screw around now?” he asks.

Tyler’s already hard, all of his pent up energy and frustration suddenly redirected into something useful. Somehow Caroline got behind him without him noticing because her hands are sliding under his shirt and around to trail across the bare skin off his stomach down to the waistband of his jeans.

“That’s cool,” he says, his breath hitching in his throat.

*

Caroline is forty-seven and Stefan’s off the wagon again and Tyler won’t answer her calls.

She kills a deer in a forest in Denmark, drinks the warm, fresh blood with relish, letting it slide down her chin unselfconsciously for once.

Two hours later she’s dancing to a song she’s never heard with a German exchange student named Ivan in a club she’s far too old to be in. But Ivan doesn’t know that and she’s not sure he’d care if he did.

They have a quick fuck in the bathroom stall before Caroline heads back out to the street with stupid, angry tears streaming down her face.

As birthdays go, this is not one of her best.

*

Stefan is two hundred years old and he’s running for his life, Caroline just a blur at his side.

Klaus’s brethren are still trying to bring him in after all this time.

It’s become something of a game now.

A deadly, dangerous game.

But one he’s certain he’ll win.

Caroline catches his hand, mouths this way.

They disappear inside of a theater, the lights already down for the show.

“Caroline, this isn’t safe,” he says.

And she places a finger to her lips and gestures to the screen.

“ _Taxi Driver_ ,” he laughs, his worry already fading away.

“I’m pretty sure we lost them anyway,” she says.

Stefan slides down into the nearest empty seat.

“How sure?”

She sits down beside him and loops her arm through his.

“Sure enough.”

*

Tyler is seventy-eight.

He doesn’t remember the young man and woman at his bedside, but they brought him a cake, so he tells the nurse to let them stay.

It’s a good cake.

Butterscotch.

His favorite.


End file.
